'If you live by the sword, you die by it' - Strauss

England came out swinging, went down for the count, rallied briefly and
were then knocked clean out of the ring. After Tim Bresnan and Luke Wright
had done a sterling job of rebuilding the innings, England were undone by
some magnificent batting, with Ricky Ponting and Shane Watson adding an
unbeaten 252 for the second wicket, an Australian record. Where England's
top order had gone for broke, Australia played the percentages, and
waltzed into yet another major final.

"We were definitely keen to go out and play our shots on a good wicket,
and unfortunately it didn't come off for us today," said Andrew Strauss
after the game. "It's one of those things. If you live by the sword, you
die by it. It's frustrating. When you lose six wickets for a 100 runs on
that sort of surface, you're always struggling. I thought Tim Bresnan
played exceptionally well and Luke Wright supported him. We weren't
completely out of the game at the halfway mark, but I did think it was a
wicket on which 300 was the par score. We were still quite light, and
needed three or four early wickets which we weren't able to get."

Strauss admitted the late-order revival had given him a little hope.
South Africa and India had faltered while chasing targets in Centurion
earlier in the tournament, but there were no such blips for Australia.
"You always hope that under lights, it [the pitch] might misbehave a bit
more," said Strauss. "And to be fair, there's pressure chasing a total
like that. In order to make that pressure count in your favour, you need
early wickets. We were able to get one, but Ponting and Watson played
exceptionally well."

England came into this tournament with the mantra that they wouldn't "die
wondering". When asked whether that approach had been taken to extremes in
the semi-final, Strauss defended his players. "Any time you play a shot
and it doesn't come off, you can be criticised for that. I think as a
template going forward, we've got to keep playing our shots. That's
important. We've got to get better at our skills so that the percentages
are more and more in our favour. That's what we have to work on.

"I think it was refreshing to see the guys going out there and expressing
themselves. I think they enjoy playing that way a lot more. To cope with
these teams away from home, we need to do it more and more. There's
obviously a case for playing the conditions a little bit better. But today
was a good wicket, and it was just one of those days when the shots didn't
come off for us."

After being beaten out of sight in the one-day series against Australia at
home, Strauss said there were quite a few positives to take out of a
tournament in which they beat both Sri Lanka and South Africa. "The seven
matches against Australia, I think we went backwards," he said. "But over
here, I think we've come forward a bit. I think the guys have gained some
confidence and they have gone out and played in the right sort of manner.

"We always said that at the end of this is a bit of a watershed, and we have
got to look at where we are as a side and how we can improve. We have got
the five one-dayers against South Africa which will be a nice way to start
that forward progress. We can take a lot from what we've done in this
tournament. There's been some excellent cricket played by us. But if we're
honest with ourselves, we're not close enough to the top two or three
teams in the world yet. We've got a lot of hard work to do if we want to
get there."

There was little hesitation when he was asked which team he now fancied to
pick up the trophy. "It's hard to look past Australia," he said. "They're
on a great run, they're the defending champions. They'll be hard to beat.
Pakistan are capable of anything. They can beat anyone on their day, and
New Zealand have got some good shot players as well. For me, Australia are
favourites, but there's a lot of cricket still to be played."

England are the only major cricket-playing nation not to win a World Cup
or an ICC Champions Trophy, but Strauss insisted that such facts had been far
from the mind when he turned up for Friday's game. "This was a great
opportunity for us to go some way to putting that right," he said. "We
were really excited about playing Australia today. We'd obviously come off
second-best against them in England, but we felt that with the type of
cricket we were playing out here, we had a good chance of challenging
them. But they were too good for us today. Their bowlers bowled very
attacking lines and lengths, and asked some questions of our batsmen.
That's one of the things they've got going in their favour. They've got a
lot of variety in their bowling."

England's next assignment will see them back in South Africa in November,
and this Champions Trophy campaign would have gone a long way towards
finalising a squad for that series. "We'll have to sit down with the
selectors in the next couple of days," said Strauss. "I think we've got
some fairly strong ideas of where we want to go as a side. There may be
one or two changes. I can't imagine that there'd be wholesale ones.
"The guys go off and have a well-earned break, but in the back of our
minds we'll know that the tour over here will be a tough one for us. It'll
be a good gauge for where we are as a side, both in Tests and one-day
cricket."

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